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If you like heart-pounding, non-stop action books

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I love heart-pounding, non-stop action books, too. These types of books can range from laugh-out-loud funny to seriously gruesome. Some suggestions for you:

Acts of Revision by Martyn Bedford
For most first novelists, having a manu-script plucked from the slush pile is only a dream, but it really happened to Bedford. His novel, which has since been sold in nine countries, features a solitary bachelor who decides to right the wrongs done to him by a string of harshly judgmental teachers through "acts of revision"—that is, murder. (Library Journal)

The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
A KGB enterprise called "The Charm School" eventually involves three Americans: "Sam Hollis, an Air Force office, who will fly one last covert mission into the center of a mad experiment; Lisa Rhodes, an embassy liaison, who will see her political hopes and ideals brutally tested; and Seth Alevy, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station, who will find his intricate dance of destiny and death reaching its devastating conclusion. (catalog summary)

The Death and Life of Bobby Z. by Don Winslow
A Mexican drug lord offers to free a DEA agent in return for an American gangster who is in jail in Thailand. In fact the gangster is dead, but the Mexican does not know this. Convicted killer Tim Kearney is offered his freedom by the DEA if he will impersonate the gangster and Kearney jumps at the opportunity, only to discover the Mexican wanted the gangster free so he could kill him. (catalog summary)

Fatherland by Robert Harris
Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb. (catalog summary)

Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
A compulsively readable novel of feeling and suspense about two men and their families, and the hit-and-run death of a young boy. On an ordinary night in a quiet Connecticut town, the Learners stop at a gas station on their way home from a concert. Josh Learner, age 10, is standing at the side of the road when a car comes racing around the bend. Josh is hit and instantly killed. The car speeds away. The boy's father saw it happen. His eight-year-old sister believes it was her fault. His mother tries to keep herself—and her family—together. And as they slip into nightmare, the novel becomes a harrowing countdown to confrontation between the hit-and-run driver—half running from his crime, half wanting to pay for it—and Ethan Learner, in deadly pursuit of the unknown man who killed his son. (catalog summary)

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan
Returning again to the theme of working-class people and their wrenching concerns, Songs for the Missing begins with the suspenseful pace of a thriller, following an Ohio community's efforts to locate a young woman who has gone missing. It soon deepens into an affecting portrait of a family trying desperately to hold onto itself and the memory of a daughter whose return becomes increasingly unlikely. Stark and honest, this is an intimate account of what happens behind the headlines of a very American tragedy. (catalog summary)

Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon
She had read about stalkers, but they belonged in a different, faraway world. She had no idea who it could be, who would want to harm her. She was trying desperately not to panic, but lately her sleep had been filled with nightmares, and she had awakened each morning with a feeling of impending doom. Thus begins Sidney Sheldons chilling novel, Tell Me Your Dreams. Three beautiful young women are suspected of committing a series of brutal murders. The police make an arrest that leads to one of the most bizarre murder trials of the century. Based on actual events, Sheldons novel races from London to Rome to the city of Quebec to San Francisco, with a climax that will leave the reader stunned. (catalog summary)